Category: News

Armenian midfielder Aras Ozbiliz will leave Spartak Moscow. The team’s head coach Dmitry Alenichev says “the footballer has lost the motivation to play for Spartak.”

“Ozbiliz has had little match practice. It was hard for him to get in shape after the injury. We decided that it would be better for him to change the team to have greater motivation to play,” Alenichev said.

Ozbiliz moved to Spartak Moscow from Kuban Krasnodar in 2013. He scored four goals in 38 matches for the red-whites. The player’s contract with Spartak runs until June 2018.

Secret files exposing evidence of widespread suspected match-fixing at the top level of world tennis, including at Wimbledon, can be revealed by the and BuzzFeed News.

Over the last decade, 16 players who have ranked in the top 50 have been repeatedly flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) over suspicions they have thrown matches.

All of the players, including winners of Grand Slam titles, were allowed to continue competing.

The TIU– set up to police the sport – said it had a zero-tolerance approach to betting-related corruption.

Chris Kermode, who heads the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the body that governs world tennis, rejected claims evidence of match-fixing had “been suppressed for any reason or isn’t being thoroughly investigated”.

But he added: “While the BBC and BuzzFeed reports mainly refer to events from about 10 years ago, we will investigate any new information.”

The cache of documents passed to the BBC and Buzzfeed News include the findings of an investigation set up in 2007 by the ATP.

Armenia has welcomed the lifting of sanctions against iran.

“We welcome the start of implementation of‪ ‎Iran deal‬ and lift of Iran sanctions.” Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said in a statement.

“‎Armenia‬ is keen to deepen its mutually beneficial cooperation with friendly ‪‎Iran,” Minister Nalbandian added.

Iran “has opened a new chapter” in its ties with the world, President Hassan Rouhani said, hours after international nuclear sanctions were lifted, the BBC reports.

The move came after the international nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said Iran had complied with a deal designed to prevent it developing nuclear weapons.

UN, US and EU sanctions have hit Iran hard for years.

Most Western governments hailed the move but Israel accused Tehran of still seeking to build a nuclear bomb.

Sanctions on Iran

• The economic sanctions being lifted now were imposed progressively by the US, EU and UN in response to Iran’s nuclear programme
• The EU is lifting in full restrictions on trade, shipping and insurance
• The US is suspending, not terminating, its nuclear-related sanctions; crucially, Iran can now reconnect to the global banking system
• The UN is lifting sanctions related to defence and nuclear technology sales, as well as an asset freeze on key individuals and companies
• Non-nuclear US economic sanctions remain in place, notably the ban on US citizens and companies trading with Iran, and US and EU sanctions on Iranians accused of sponsoring terrorism remain in place

A flurry of Iranian economic activity is anticipated:

• Nearly $100bn (£70bn) of Iranian assets are being unlocked
• Iran is expected to increase its daily export of 1.1m barrels of crude oil by 500,000 shortly, and a further 500,000 thereafter
• Iran is reportedly poised to buy 114 new passenger planes from the Airbus consortium

Mr Rouhani said everyone was happy with the deal, apart from those he described as warmongers in the region – Israel and hardliners in the US Congress.

“We Iranians have reached out to the world in a sign of friendliness, and leaving behind the enmities, suspicions and plots, have opened a new chapter in the relations of Iran with the world,” he said in a statement to the nation on Sunday morning.

The lifting of sanctions was “a turning point” for Iran’s economy, he added, saying the country needed to be less reliant on oil revenues.

Photo: AFP

 

Dozens of people have died in an offensive by so-called Islamic State on government-held areas of Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria, local media say, the BBC reports.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 85 civilians were killed in the attack, as well as 50 Syrian soldiers.

Syria’s state news agency Sana reported that around 300 civilians had died in the Baghaliyeh area of the city.

Meanwhile, the UN warned of “sharply deteriorating conditions” in the besieged areas.

Around 200,000 people were in these areas, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Photo: Reuters

 

The older brother of Canadian singer Celine Dion has died of cancer, two days after her husband also died, teh BBC reported.

Daniel Dion, 59, died on Saturday near Montreal, a statement by the singer’s spokeswoman said.

Ms Dion’s family paid tribute to the father-of-two, calling him “a gentle and reserved man of many talents”.

Her husband and former manager, Rene Angelil, died on Thursday aged 73. His death in Las Vegas came after two bouts with throat cancer.

Daniel Dion was the eighth of 14 children, and performed with his siblings in their parents’ piano bar in Quebec province.

He had been suffering cancer of the throat, tongue and brain, his sister Claudette told the Journal de Montreal newspaper (in French).

“He was ready, and isn’t suffering any more,” she said. “He was at peace.”

Real Salt Lake has acquired FW Yura Movsisyan as a Designated Player via loan from FC Spartak Moscow in the Russian Premier League, General Manager Craig Waibel announced today.  The 28-year-old striker returns to RSL – pending receipt of his ITC from the Russian Federation – after winning MLS Cup with the Claret-and-Cobalt in his final match with the club in 2009, the State of Utah’s lone major professional sports championship since 1973.

“For me, it’s been a long time I’ve been wanting to come back,” said Movsisyan, whose 2016 RSL jersey will reprise the #14 he wore with the Utah side from 2007-09. “Obviously Salt Lake was my first choice because it was such a great place for me and my family.  I felt at home in Utah.  Leaving with a championship – I want to come back and do that again.

“I want to win more championships with Salt Lake – with the club that I was part of the evolution.  I was part of the team that went basically from the bottom to being champions.  This is what I want to do again and what I’m excited about.  For me, it’s an amazing thing to come back.”

The 2016 season will mark the Armenian International’s second stint with RSL, having previously played with Real Salt Lake from 2007-2009, coming to Utah via trade with the then-Kansas City Wizards.  In three MLS campaigns on the Wasatch Front, Movsisyan played 53 regular-season matches with the Claret-and-Cobalt, scoring 15 goals while helping RSL to the 2009 MLS Cup title.

Movsisyan owns the distinction of notching a stoppage-time equalizer at Colorado in the 2008 regular-season finale to vault RSL into the postseason for the first time, and notching the club’s first-ever playoff goal a week later against the club’s expansion brethren CD Chivas USA.  Movsisyan currently ranks sixth overall in club history with 15 MLS regular-season goals scored.

“Yura is a goalscorer,” said Waibel, the former MLS Cup and Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Champion now in his first full year as RSL General Manager. “He’s always been a goalscorer and statistically speaking, his numbers are undeniably productive no matter where he’s played.  He’s at an age right now and at a point of his life right now, he had a priority with his wife that they wanted to move back to the States.  Everything just added up to make sense for him to come.  We have an undeniable interest to bring in good soccer players and goalscorers and Yura is one of those.  We believe he’s a double-digit goalscorer and we’re really excited to get him back out on the field and start producing.”

Photo: AFP    

A clinical trial of a new drug in France has left one person brain-dead and another five people in hospital, the health minister says, the BBC reports.

The oral trial was being conducted by a private laboratory in the north-western city of Rennes, Marisol Touraine said.

The trial has been suspended and the firm is recalling the volunteers. It is unclear how many people are involved.

Media reports that the drug is a cannabis-based painkiller have been denied by the health ministry.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said an investigation had been opened.

Astronomers have seen what could be the most powerful supernova ever detected, the BBC reported.

The exploding star was first observed back in June last year but is still radiating vast amounts of energy.

At its peak, the event was 200 times more powerful than a typical supernova, making it shine with 570 billion times the brightness of our Sun.

Researchers think the explosion and ongoing activity have been boosted by a very dense, highly magnetised, remnant object called a magnetar.

This object, created as the supernova got going, is probably no bigger than a major city, such as London, and is likely spinning at a fantastic rate – perhaps a thousand times a second.

Wikipedia, the Internet’s crowdsourced encyclopedia, celebrates its 15th birthday Friday. To mark the occasion, the site has published a list of the 15 most heavily edited English-language articles.

1. George W. Bush (45,862)
2. List of WWE personnel (42,863)
3. United States (35,742)
4. Wikipedia (33,958)
5. Michael Jackson (28,152)
6. Jesus (28,084)
7. Catholic Church (26,421)
8. List of programs broadcast by ABS-CBN (25,188)
9. Barack Obama (24,708)
10. Adolf Hitler (24,612)
11. Britney Spears (23,802)
12. World War II (23,739)
13. Deaths in 2013 (22,529)
14. The Beatles (22,399)
15. India (22,271)

Since its launch on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has grown to more than 36 million articles, with approximately 80,000 volunteer editors contributing to the website, according to the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation behind it.

Wikipedia has expanded to include 280 languages and averages more than 18 billion page views monthly, making it one of the world’s most visited websites.